To the best of Applicant's knowledge, no prior art exists which contains any of the new teachings of the instant application, or the particular combination of specific features of the embodiments of the present invention.
However, the present invention has evolved from experiments done using modified models following on the teachings of the applicant's prior U.S. Pat. No. 4,502,257 issued Mar. 5, 1985. In one possible model of the teaching of the prior U.S. Pat. No. 4,502,257 the diagonals of a square were investigated to form a module according to that prior patent. By continuing to develop newer geometric models and in working by modifying structures discovered in the prior U.S. Pat. No. 4,502,257, specifically in working with the module formed of the diagonals of a square sheet, the applicant's subsequent U.S. Pat. No. 4,682,450 issued Jul. 28, 1987 was granted for a structure having an exterior shape being at least a partial triakis icosohedron and having an interior shape being at least a partial great dodecahedron. At the time of prosecuting this prior patent, a simple geometric description of the mathematical form of the model claimed was requested by the applicant to be allowed, but this was rejected by the examiner, and the independent claims as finally allowed were a compromise, leaving the simpler geometric description relating to the different discrete structures formed on the interior and the exterior of the model to be allowed as dependent claims only.
Later experiments following on and further developing beyond the teaching of the U.S. Pat. No. 4,682,450 for a geometric framework, yielded new teachings which were patented in the applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 4,864,796 issued Sep. 12, 1989, for a Variable Polyhedral Framework. This patent also contained the quality of having "sidedness" in that a geometric model was disclosed being a variable space-framework whose several structural forms, though identical, were discrete and located on different sides of the plane, discrete from one side of the model to the other, reversed in both location and orientation. In other words, the model of the applicant's prior U.S. Pat. No. 4,864,796 contained a "thickness" being the depth of the framework across the plane of symmetry, and surfaces on one side of the plane were discrete and separate from surfaces on the other side of the plane.
Further experimentation following the paths opened by the applicant's prior patents has now led to the development of many newer, and different models having none of the features of formation and none of the forms of the applicants earlier patents, and a new, more generic teaching which is the matter of the instant application. Following along the ideas of modularity, planar panels making polyhedral frameworks having a depth, an interior and exterior with discrete surfaces formed across that depth, and frameworks being easily clad, and the other ideas as discussed below have led to the teaching of embodiments of the present invention.
In the applicant's previous U.S. Pat. No. 4,864,796 for a Variable Polyhedron, the ball and socket device located at each end of the linear hinge axis functions in effect as a hinge and is defined in Column 4, lines 35-36 as "a variable means being either a ball and socket means or a hinge means".
Further research with the teaching of these prior patents has discovered that the ball and sockets when joined to edges, in the case of this patent, to the edges of polygons in a specific manner, may in and of themselves function as a hinge This new teaching is also included in embodiments of the present invention.
Though the continuity of ideas and models can be clearly seen to be evolving as the natural outgrowth of continued research and experimentation in following some of the ideas of the earlier patents; the generic teaching of the instant application is a new teaching, being the fruition of continued research Of one branch direction leading away from but encompassing some of the earlier patents.
In the instant application, the hinge feature has become one of the essential teachings, and has been found to be the basis for a simpler generic teaching encompassing some features of the earlier patents and in addition many new features being the basic module and the several unique polyhedral structures embodiments of the present invention never before disclosed, comprising the new teaching of embodiments of the present invention.
In essence, the applicant's earlier abovementioned patents are in fact the pedagogic tools and transitional stages used in the continual development of a sequence of particular species of a larger generic teaching now disclosed and the different teaching of a domain of unique polyhedral geometric structures, of which the genus has subsequently been discovered, and the generic and specific claims of this domain of geometry are the new teaching of the instant application.
In addition, some additional material disclosures were made to the patent office in the forms of photographs of models after the U.S. Pat. No. 4,682,450 issued, and were included in the Patent Examiner's file. These models also indicate my further developments in transitional stages leading to the present teaching.